They only disagree with that because the Coca-Cola company told people that it wasn't a marketing tactic. Think about it though, if they did indeed do it to increase demand, they wouldn't openly tell their customers that they were tricked just for the company to make some extra money. That would be an easy way to lose
three-quarters of their customers.
Every Marketing/Business/Advertising professor I've ever had has believed it to be a marketing ploy and teaches it as such. Obviously college professors don't know everything, but I think that a marketing professor has a better understanding of this kind of stuff then some surfer just going by statements from the Coca-Cola company.
The logic behind ceasing production of Coke Classic doesn't even make
sense. New Coke was allegedly created in order to attract customers who preferred the taste of Pepsi. They claim that they were worried that by producing both New Coke and Coke Classic simultaneously that they would divide their customers, and this is the part that doesn't make
sense. Coke customers drink Coke because they prefer the taste of it as compared to Pepsi, so why would people who already preferred Coke switch over to Coca-Cola's version of Pepsi? The potential customers of New Coke would mostly be converted Pepsi fans, so that wouldn't take sales away from Coke Classic.
Even if it did divide their customers though, the fear of Pepsi being able to say that they were the number one soda doesn't hold much weight either since New Coke and Coke Classic could still be marketed as the number one selling brand of soda since they are both two different varieties of the Coke brand.
Anyone with a business or marketing degree will tell you that you never replace an already successful and established product with something else unless their is something wrong with the original product.
You can never trust what a corporation or a politician says. Saying that Coca-Cola didn't know what they were doing with New Coke is like saying that cigarette companies didn't know what they were doing by putting cigarette advertisements at they eye-level of children.
